Creation of a World
by Nyah
Summary: “Do you ever regret it?” She asked. “That I made you promise never to turn me.” A glimpse of what might yet be. E/S.


**Disclaimer:** Characters etc are property of Charlaine Harris. Only borrowing them.

**Note: **This is a strange fic that comes from a strange place. I have the feeling that it's somehow related to 'Split Second' and 'The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle' but that's just a feeling. What do I know? I just wrote the darn thing. I swear I don't have a fixation on the subject of turning, just on the subject of creation. I'm fascinated. Anyway, the following quote kind of spurned it on:

"What really interests me is whether God had any choice in the creation of the world." --Albert Einstein

**Creation of a World**

**Midnight**

Sookie sprang from the bed, naked, to pace the the floor. As compelled to move as she was compelled to take another breath. There was a sort of current passing through her muscles, burning over her brain, like joy or too much caffeine.

"Do you ever regret it?" She asked. "That I made you promise never to turn me."

Eric could see an _idea_ shining so brightly in her eyes that it was almost already a thing. He sat forward to watch her, her involuntary motion drawing him like a beating heart. Maybe it had never been blood that attracted him, only the unstoppable. That would certainly explain why he was with her.

"I am not infinite," he said, dispelling his own myth before he had a chance to become it. "If I were, then perhaps the time I will have to spend mourning you would seem short. Perhaps it would one day blend with the rest and just become more time. But as things stand... not even I will ever be that old."

Sookie paced the candlelit glow of his bedroom, the light pooled on her like oil as she neared it, rising to caramel then honey tones on her skin, before she turned back to shifting shadows. She was nearly forty years old now but to know that by looking at her was impossible, unless one also knew that she wasn't quite human.

"I need to make something beautiful," she said and he could feel the need tingling on the soles of his feet and in the joints of each finger. Whether it rose up from him or from her or from something between them he couldn't be sure but the need slid up his gullet to sit on the tip of his tongue.

"I have to," she continued. "And I'll never be able to write it or paint it or... I don't know. I have to _make _it. It has to exist. It... I...."

But he already understood. She wanted to make something perfect and whole, something that had never been before. Something that could live on its own. Something that could choose to walk away.

She wanted to create a world. That was all.

"It's time to go," he said.

She nodded. Her life had been insomnia for so many years now. True insomnia which is not the same as sleeplessness. She'd lived with the constant sensation that everything was just a little bit off. She was awake when she should be sleeping, she felt twenty-five when she should feel forty, she remained still with all the world laid open at her feet.

After the fairy war, after the tears and the healing, things had grown calm. Life had resumed its easier pace. She'd returned to work and life in her little town by day and to love, with him, by night. A miraculous year passed in which nothing much happened, no close brushes with death, no stupendous feats of rescue. Then another passed. And another.

She remained a barmaid. He remained a sheriff.

There was a kind of superstition to their days. It was unspoken between them that the world they lived in was one too dangerous, that their parting would almost inevitably mean her death at the hand of one faction or another. They lived as if something might draw attention to the fact of her precious fragility, her relentless mortality. If nothing changed then maybe nothing would change. A perfect equilibrium.

Things were not calm. They were becalmed. Stagnant.

She packed a few things in suitcase. Nothing much-- just a few changes of clothing for each of them, some cash, and a few books.

When they left, he put the keys to his house and to hers on the kitchen table. He didn't leave a note. Pam could do with their things as she wished. They were finished with them.

On the first flight, Eric could feel her sense of wonder. It had been a long time since she's wanted change. It had been a long time since he's wanted to just leave it all behind.

They made their journey in fits and starts, pacing the sun. They saw the world. They saw everything.

They flew toward her idea that was almost already a new life.

On the balcony of a house on an island that climbs up out of the Mediterranean she's leans into his arms and smiles. For the moment she is content to be here with him, to be held and cherished, and shown the world that was always there for her to see. For the moment she is calm.

But someday soon it will arise again in the soles of her feet and the joints of her fingers and she'll begin to pace.

It will rise, too, to the tip of his tongue and he'll speak plainly this time, "Yes, I regret it."

And she'll tell him the thing that has her smiling now: that she doesn't have to be what she always was.

She can make something beautiful. She can make something whole and perfect. Something that's never been before. She can make it by releasing him from his promise. She can make herself. She can make a world.

And he'll do it for her. He'll make her something that can walk on its own. Even if it means making her something that might choose to walk away.


End file.
